NAND

Its been a crazy last few years in the flash storage space. Things really started taking off around 2006 when NAND flash and moores law got together. in 2010 it was clear that flash storage was going to be a major part of your storage makeup in the future. It may not be NAND flash specifically though. It will be some kind of memory and not spinning disks.

Breaking The Cost Barrier.

For the last few years, I’ve always told people to price out on the cost of IO not the cost of storage. Buying flash storage was mainly a niche product solving a niche problem like to speed up More >

I actually had a early morning sessions and gave my Solid State Storage talk and had a great time. The audience was awesome asked very smart questions and I didn’t run over time. The guys and gals here in Dallas have put on another great event and it isn’t even lunch time yet!

As promised here is the slide deck from todays session. As always if you have any questions please drop me a line.

Knowing when a technology is dying is always a good skill to have. Like most of my generation we weren’t the first on the computer scene but lived through several of it’s more painful transitions. As a college student I was forced to learn antiquated technologies and languages. I had to take a semester of COBOL. I also had to take two years of assembler for the IBM 390 mainframe and another year of assembler for the x86 focused on the i386 when the Pentium was already on the market. Again and again I’ve been forced to invest time in dying technologies. Well not any More >

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." - Mark Twain

I try and keep this quote in my mind whenever I’m teaching about new technologies. You often hear the same things parroted over and over again long after they quit being true. This problem is compounded by fast moving technologies like NAND Flash.

If you have read my previous posts about Flash memory you are already aware of NAND flash endurance and reliability. Just like CPU’s manufacturing processes flash receive boost in capacity as you decrease the size of the More >

Solid state storage has come on strong in the last year. With that explosion of new products it can be hard to look at all the vendor information and decide which device is best for you. Between the different manufacturers using different methods to benchmark their products showing two different numbers for reads and writes using different methodologies it can be extremely confusing. If you haven’t read Solid State Storage Basics you may not understand all the terms used in this article.

Solid state storage is the new kid on the block. We see new press releases every day about just how awesome this new technology is. Like with any technology, you need a solid foundation in how it works before you can decide if it is right for you. Lets review what solid state storage is and where it differs from traditional hard disks. I will cover solid state storage in a general manor not favoring any specific flash manufacturer or specific type of Flash.